Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Calgary Folk Music Festival announces the final addition to an already buzzed-about line up. Gillian Welch will perform Saturday July 28, in the timeslot left vacant by Sinead O’Connor’s sudden cancellation of her North American tour.Gillian Welch, performing with long-time collaborator David Rawlings, is the epitome of folk-country simplicity. She exudes pure harmony, with a sound that seems coaxed from the dusty floorboards of a clapboard recording studio high in the Tennessee mountains. A true voice of the American south, Welch is an inspiration to other songwriters, and has had her songs recorded by artists including Allison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Blind Pilot, and Jimmy Buffet.Gillian joins an already stellar line up of artists including Chris Isaak, Randy Newman, Dan Mangan, Charles Bradley, Serena Ryder, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Iron & Wine and Beirut. A list of all 68 artists performing at the 33rd annual festival is available here: http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/artistsTickets for the Calgary Folk Music Festival are selling at an unprecedented rate! Early Bird 4-day passes sold out in under a week, and regular priced 4-day passes and single-day tickets are selling faster than ever before. The festival is now more than 60% sold, weeks ahead of previous years, and the festival anticipates all tickets will be snapped up before the end of June. Tickets are available online at http://www.calgaryfolkfest.com/tickets or by phone at 403-233-0904.

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Alan S. Keesler

About Me

I was born in Pomona, California at a very young age. I had a pretty normal childhood…or I was a pretty normal child hood if mom is telling the story. I was a paperboy and washed cars. I was a soda fountain jock-jerk and a manic mechanic but my first real job was as a labor organizer in a maternity ward. Then, because of the misjudgment of a judge I spent nearly 10 years in the service of our country mostly on KP duty. Our country sure turns out a lot of dirty dishes. I am a past master at pots and pans. They eventually recognized my real talent and let me wander around some very unfriendly places carrying a big radio that didn’t work.

Along the way I took up the bass guitar, jotting down stories, electronic engineering and earned a degree in advanced criminal activities. I spent most of my adult life, if you can call it that, working in the I.T. industry, which I was particularly suited for since we worked in rooms with no windows. On and off I taught in colleges, universities and reform schools as a student teacher…

I like smog, traffic, kinky people, car trouble, noisy neighbors, and crowded seedy bars where I have been known to quote Raymond Chandler as pickup lines. I have always been a voracious reader, everything from the classics, to popular fiction, history to science but I have a special place in my heart for crime fiction, especially hard-boiled detective fiction and noir. I write a book and music review blog for all genres at The Dirty Lowdown. And another dedicated to Crime Fiction and all things Noir called Crimeways. It’s named after the magazine that appeared in the Kenneth Fearing classic, The Big Clock. There I write scholarly reviews of the classic hard boiled, noir and crime fiction books from the 20's through today. Mostly I drool over the salacious pictures on the covers.